Tagged: Quarterly Report RSS

  • Rastin Mehr 2:40 pm on January 14, 2012 Permalink
    Tags: Quarterly Report   

    How We Wrapped Up 2011 

    Discussing documentation for Anahita 1.6

    I really wanted to post this blog before our Episode 4 podcast and also 12K commits celebration. We have been so busy working on the Anahita 1.6 Embryo release and updating the Apps that I had to put off blogging for a while. Now that I finally got the time, I would like to mention some of the highlights of the 2011 4th quarter.

    Continuing to work on Anahita 1.6 Embryo

    The last quarter of 2011 was mainly focused on developing the Anahita 1.6 codebase. We really wanted to have the 1.6 Embryo and 1.7 Birth release ready last year, but more work was required. We are very close to an Embryo release ready and we really would like to use it to power Anahitapolis.com website for a while before we package it as a 1.7 Birth release. That requires a lot of detailing and polishing that needs to be done. For example just last night we realized that the base class for the Anahita modules (not apps don’t confuse the two) yet need to be implemented. Small work, but all these small works eventually add up.

    Celebrating 11000 Code Commits

    Since Nov. 21st that we hit 11K code commits to the Anahita code repository, the development has been going at a steady pace. We even worked through the holiday seasons and during the past 7 weeks we have done close to 1000 more commits (currently standing at 11993) and we will be celebrating the 12K commits very soon.

    Starting Anahita Hangouts and Podcasts

    With the advent of Google+ and Google Hangout we decided to try answering some of our Premium Tribe member’s questions during video chat sessions. Very quickly many people signed up to the point that we had to schedule 3 different sessions These sessions are completely unscripted wehere Anahita Premium Tribe members can ask us any questions on the spot and Ash and I do our best to answer them. These sessions are recorded and published with minimal editing as podcasts (Subscribe to the iTunes Feed here). We often start a session as a Q&A formats, but when time allows, then they turn into round table discussions where we discuss different topics regarding Anahita, Community Management, Current affairs in the technology and social networking market in general. We have produced 3 episodes so far. The next episode will be published this Monday January the 16th. We would like to have a new episode every 2 weeks. Let’s see how that goes.

    Wrapping Up 2011

    Since last January that made the Anahita 1.5 Birth release available we have been using the same codebase to power Anahitapolis.com for providing support, managing about 14 projects, and run our day to day business operations. We really take pride in that. In our experience, using a social networking environment to deliver service and support has clearly proven to be a superior option over support tickets and traditional discussion boards that are being used by many companies these days. Perhaps because communications on social network happen in a far more intuitive and organic fashion.

    So no bragging rights for us yet until we have the Anahita 1.6 Embryo and 1.7 Birth releases ready for you. In the mean time in order to stay updated about the Anahita project:

    1. Follow us on Twitter @anahitapolis and use #anahita to tweet about us
    2. Like us on Facebook facebook.com/anahitasocial
    3. Keep reading this blog
    4. Or join a Free or Premium Anahita Tribe

     

     

     

     

  • Rastin Mehr 5:59 pm on November 7, 2011 Permalink
    Tags: Quarterly Report   

    Anahita 3Q Report 

    Although late it is time to post our 3rd quarterly report. We have been spending most of the the last 3 month on development of 2 upcoming major releases of Anahita and I didn’t want to start this report until one major milestone was met. We are there now so here we go:

    1. Anahita 1.6 Alpha Is In The Trunk

    Developing the Anahita 1.6 codebase is where we invested most of our time during the last quarter. Anahita social networking engine reached the alpha state last week. Anahita 1.6 is not just the 1.5 with more features. In fact we have rewritten parts of the Anahita Library from ground up such as the Domain libraries where all the communication with the database is happening. We have also made improvements at the DNA level that open up a world of new opportunities to the Anahita developers. The 1.6 version of Anahita libraries is faster, more efficient, and more developer friendly while containing about %16 less code. To learn more read: Anahita 1.6 Alpha is Ready

    2. Five major apps have been updated for the 1.6 codebase

    We have also upgraded the Anahita™ Groups, Discussions, Photos, Todos, and Pages for the Anahita codebase. The new apps contain up to %46 percent less code. They are available in the 1.6-branch in the Anahita code repository as examples for our Premium members to update their custom Anahita extensions and apps.

    Anahita 1.6 Apps

    RED: is the 1.6 release - BLUE: is the 1.5 release

    3. Gold and Executive Premium Plans Introduced

    A lot of Anahita premium members are technology startups who are developing a software as a service or niche market social networks. Sometimes they have questions that they cannot post and share on our public and premium groups or they require code reviews and asstance with planning a better developing strategy. That is why we introduced the Anahita Premium Gold and Executive plans that provide all the benefits of the Premium Platinum plan plus a number of private consulting hours at discounted rate. You can learn more about the Anahita Premium Gold and Executive plans here

    4. Development of Anahita’s Own Visual and HTML editors

    In order to facilitate publishing richer content and communication we needed to have our own visual and html editor API. The existing rich text editors are mainly developed for CMS software and they are not quite suitable and secure for a social networking environment. That is why we invested some time writing our own editor library using mootools and TinyMCE. The ability to use visual and html editors significantly improved the user experience for posting comments on discussion topics and publishing documentation pages.

    Anahita Visual Editor

    Anahita HTML Editor

    5. Celebrated 10k code commits

    On on september 1st we celebrated the 10,000 code commits to the Anahita code repository. We are now very close to reach the 11K commits and that means there will be promotions and rewards on the way for the existing Premium members as well as those of you who would like to sign up as Premium members. So please stay tuned!

    What’s Next

    Our current focus is to reach the Anahita 1.6 Embryo release which is all the functionality of Anahita 1.5 but on the new codebase with some sparse new features. We will be using the Embryo release for a while to power Anahitapolis.com so we can further polish and debug the software. Then the stable codebase will become the Anahita 1.7 Birth release. That’s right there won’t be a 1.6 Birth release which is why we have considered the 1.6 to be a transitional release from 1.5 to 1.7. The Anahita 1.7 will be the second major leap since the beginning of 2010 and it will be a great start for developing cutting edge social networking service and technologies in 2012.

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  • Rastin Mehr 7:49 pm on July 27, 2011 Permalink
    Tags: Quarterly Report   

    Anahita 2nd Quarter Update 

    Planning World Liberation over Sushi

    Ash and I planning world liberation over sushi

    It has been slightly more than 3 months since I posted the first quarterly report on April 8th 2011. Just recently Ash and I were recovering from a nasty case of flu which is why this blog post is posted a few weeks late. We are back on the saddle now moving forward to reach the upcoming milestones.

    Last year this time we were busy rewriting the Anahita Framework based on the NGS (Nodes-Graphs-Stories) architecture. Many existing social networking projects only mimic the behaviour and feature-set of social networking services such as facebook and myspace but under the hood, they do not actually follow the correct architecture of a social network. They provide an initial start, however overtime they fail to scale, grow, and evolve like a social network should.

    To solve this problem our goal was to create a developer friendly social networking engine based on the correct NGS architecture. We accomplished our goal successfully and the first Birth release of Anahita was made available in late January 2011 to our Premium and First Tribe members. Today you can download Anahita™ for free as free beer and the code is 100% open source. Anahita Social apps and extensions are distributed via our Premium Tribe membership plan.

    1. 16 updates of Anahita™ Social Networking Engine

    We’ve had 16 minor birth releases of Anahita since April 8th. At every stage more bugs were resolved and improvements were made in small bits. Applying Anahita updates is nothing horrific similar to Joomla where people had to download specific patches and do FTP uploads on the server.

    To update an Anahita installation, all it takes is to upload a zip file package in the administration back-end. Even better, by the advent of Anahita™ Bazaar technology, the site super admins can apply updates by click of a button in the administration back-end.

    2. Anahita™ Bazaar delivers apps and updates

    Unlike CMS technologies, social networking software has to constantly change and evolve. This also means applying a lot of regular updates. We have developed the Anahita Bazaar technology which allows one-click update and install of Anahita social networking engine, apps and extensions. Anahita Bazaar delivers fresh code to you directly from Anahitapolis.com code repositories.

    3. Over 9000 code commits until today

    Just recently we celebrate 9000 code commits to the Anahita repository. 1000 commits have been done since the beginning of April 2011.

    4. Anahita™ Todos Birth Release

    We developed and released Anahita™ Todos social app as a Birth release by taking out the task manager out of the Anahita™ Projects app and making it available as an individual installable social app on the People and Groups profiles. By installing the Anahita Todos with the Discussions, Photos, and Pages apps on a group profile, you get yourself a project management group. In fact this is how we are managing over 12 projects on the Anahitapolis.com.

    I must remind you that the Anahita™ Projects has been discontinued after the release of Anahita Todos app.

    5. Anahita™ Connect Birth Release

    Anahita™ Connect reached the Birth release on May 20th. This social app, according to one of our Premium Members, is being used 90% of the time for registering and authenticating users on his social networks. Same is true for members who are logging on Anahitapolis.com.

    Anahita™ Connect is the OAuth implementation for Anahita™ and it provides a list of very useful features such as easy registration based on an existing profile on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn, one-click authentication, as well as ability to post a story update from an Anahita powered social network to other supported social networking services.

    6. Anahita™ Invites Embryo Release

    We have revived the Anahita™ Invites app and currently using an Embryo release on the Anahitapolis.com. The focus of the new social app is:

    • inviting your followers to follow the group you have just created.
    • inviting a limited number of people to join the Anahita powered social network that you are on by sending out emails.

    For the time being this social app is quite simple and we are improving it as it is being used by the Anahitapolis tribe members.

    7. Anahita™ Pages Embryo Release

    This app was developed in the month of July out of the need to write documentation for our software projects. Ability to publish html pages in a social network is nothing as sexy as geo-location, event management, real-time chat or video, but it is one of those apps that we can’t do without. I’d say it is perhaps as important as ability to publish books in any literate society.

    Anahita™ Pages is currently being used on Anahitapolis.com where the premium members can contribute and edit pages. All pages can be commented on and revisions are maintained. We are expecting to have a Birth release next month.

    8. Anahita™ reveals her dark side

    The Anahita™ Shiraz template now has 2 variations of Dark and Light themes for those who prefer the dark side of Anahita for their social network.

    Anahita™ Shiraz is a minimalist and generic template that is shipped with the Anahita™ Social Networking Engine by default. It can be used either on a live site as it is or as a blueprint and reference for developing custom templates for Anahita.

    9. Public read access to the Atrium group

    Since the 4th of July we have decided to provide public read-only access to the free groups on Anahitapolis. This may not apply to all the free groups on Anahitapolis website, however the content of groups such as  the Atrium and the Art of Community are now available to public.

    The Upcoming Milestones

    The past 3 months have been quite productive and we have grown quite a bit from being a project with a donation box to an online supplier of social networking infrastructure. A number of our premium members have already launched their Anahita powered social networks and since our public launch in late January we have gathered lots of great feedbacks from the great and supportive members in the Anahita tribes.

    Our focus is currently to deliver the next major releases of Anahita social networking engine and apps. Basically whatever knowledge and experience that we have gathered in the past 6 month is going to become part of the next releases of Anahita code.

    We’ve always had a policy of build first and brag later! As soon as the next releases are ready we will tell you more about them. For now don’t forget to:

     

     

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